Editorial: Streaming, the college concert slasher

What do Nirvana, Fleetwood Mac, Bob Dylan, Patti Smith and Ella Fitzgerald all have in common?

Beyond being music icons, they’ve all played a show on Lehigh’s campus — or four shows in Bob Dylan’s case.

The history of the Lehigh concert is rich, beginning with its birth in 1963 — a concert by The Temptations and The Isley Brothers in Grace Hall. Timothy Bird, ‘64, a former reporter for The Brown and White, wrote at the time the concert was as a “nameless cacophony of pulsating rhythm punctuated by the moaning cries of the saxophone from the gyration of the three brothers at the front of the bandstand.”

By the 1980s, Lehigh was on its way to establishing a decades-long tradition of drawing some of music’s biggest names to campus.

In 1987 alone, four iconic bands graced Stabler Arena. Iron Maiden rocked so hard that Brian Cooke, ‘89, the then news editor for The Brown and White, feared Stabler would fall deeper into the sinkhole situated underneath the arena’s structure. The Beastie Boys brought the house down with Public Enemy as their opener, and Crosby, Stills and Nash also played a sold-out show.

These days, our hopes for similarly iconic acts are dashed by announcements of performers like COIN, Waka Flocka Flame and Rich the Kid — artists with limited legacy power. So, we can’t help but wonder what’s changed.

In the past few years, University Productions — the organization that hosts concerts at Lehigh — has only held one annual concert each spring. The booked artists are also always falling  out of the cultural consciousness, with just a few hits collectively. All of which are overplayed in sticky fraternity basements.

We recognize the challenges University Productions faces as a completely student-run organization with a limited budget. In fact, we think the decline in both the quantity and quality of the Lehigh concert has little to do with University Productions or Lehigh at all.

Instead, the drop has more to do with inescapable changes to the music industry — one that forces artists to focus on massive touring venues and streams as opposed to the intimacy of a college campus performance in order to make a profit .

As the 2000s rolled around, the number of concerts at Lehigh began to slow to a trickle, with only two concerts a year. But star power didn’t yet drop, as acts like Cyndi Lauper performed in 2004.

This decade of initial decline also marked plunging record sales, as file-sharing sites like Napster and Limewire grew in popularity, and people were able to access all of the music they wanted for free.

Between 1999 and 2009 — the last year before Napster was court ordered to cease all operations — music sales were cut in half, from $14.6 billion to $6.3 billion dollars.

But before Napster shuttered, Spotify was already in development in Sweden. It began in 2006 as a way to provide an alternative for piracy.

Spotify quickly took off and ushered in a new era — one of streaming wars.

This only further disrupted the music industry. Physical and digital sales continued to plummet, because there was now a way to have access to all of the music in the world for only a small fee.

Spotify is able to charge its users so little because it pays artists fractions of a penny per listen, from $0.005 to $0.003 per stream. If an artist’s streams are below 1,000 minutes per song, they’re not even paid at all.

This has led to a situation where the amount of money artists are garnering from recorded music is negligible. Further, the current music scene, ushered in by this economic landscape, survives off the touring industry, as 95% of an artist’s revenue comes from live performances.

The cost of concert tickets has also increased dramatically over the past few decades. In 2024, the average concert cost $135.92 to attend, whereas in 1996, the average ticket cost $25.81. This leaves little room for new artists to enter popular culture.

In the past, artists could make money selling physical records, and touring was just another way to promote their music. This was the case in the 1980s and ‘90s, when the Lehigh concert was at its peak. Tour stops at college campuses were crucial points for artists to connect with fans and drive up music sales with their key demographics.

The changing philosophy behind concerts, from something fun to promote an album to the main event, is why there is a change in production and tickets.

One of the more practical reasons artists can no longer perform in college arenas like Stabler is because an artist at the caliber of The Beastie Boys today requires a much fancier, more complicated setup. This might be why in the last 10 years, some of the spring concerts have been held at ArtsQuest.

The future seems bleak for college concerts, especially when Andy Grammer was the top contender for Lehigh’s concert this year, and we couldn’t even secure him.

That said, there is a way to revive some of the magic — we should shift away from trying to obtain big artists on their way out and instead opt for the up-and-comers.

Though the current state of the music industry doesn’t support smaller artists, college concerts could help.

For decades, some of the biggest names in the music industry started out playing on small, dingy stages in front of young adults excited to see a performance at their school. These acts might take more work to find, but small artists with great potential are still out there.